I am your settled flower vase, heavy by the window.
Ripples moan to their death against my insides, long since stems were inserted.
You are the sun warming my heavy hourglass, breaking right through this Saturday morning still.
You split me into light, forcing rainbows to shoot through these molecular hips onto any shy planes below me.
You bang out my colors and thrust my angles into prisms that glitter the whole room.
Like all days, you slowly rise above me until all I can see is blue, then black.

I was so clear until he saw my dirty bottom tonight.
His face as dark as the cold pane beside me.
The narrowest part of me yearns for you as his hands encircle my waist.
My tired flowers droop heavy with longing since you left to heat other vases hours ago
But stretch their necks to the water as he drenches my petals.

For one moment, I am the warm ocean.
But I get cold fast.
I am glad to return to my windowsill, where I will wait the night for you to shine again.

(The calendar turned for years like this before I realized you’re not the sun.)

Because he changed me, you will lift my flowers tomorrow morning to emit their own pink glow.
I fall asleep safely assuming so…

But wake looking up to tall roses towering beside me, scowling
From the kind of woman free enough to afford flowers for a man

Where is my soul, cowering somewhere in some file in time?

Baby, all along, you were the water changer.
Flowers fall from your capable fingers into my body every week.
I imagined the sun as this fantastical giver/kaleidoscope maker.
But without breathing your one part oxygenated kisses, I will never be filled.
The sun is ninety million miles away, and untouchable
But my glass fingers press back against yours – day after day after day.

In the eight minutes it takes for his invisible rays to reach my face,
In your strong grip, one day, I break.
I am now close to my original sand.
I know I have made your scars.

Maybe to you, I was the dark?
Please glue my pieces with love.